US's Pak conundrum

Washington, 12 November 2010: On 7 November, the visiting US president, Barack Obama, encountered a sharp question at Bombay's St Xavier's College, where a management student, Afsheen Irani, asked him: "Why is Pakistan such an important ally of the United States? Why hasn't America called it a terrorist state?" Although Obama was coached how to answer such a question, he was a bit rattled. Nonetheless, he came back saying he was expecting such a question.

There was no doubt that he was expecting such a question and he also remembered how to obfuscate it. He said: "Pakistan is an enormous country with an enormous potential, but it also has extremist elements within it just like any other country." It was rather a clumsy way to hide the facts, and it was evident that it did not satisfy the student. She said so when she made clear that she never got the reply she was waiting for. "I was looking for an answer and I did not get it. I was not satisfied with what he said. He was very diplomatic."
Kick India out, says Pollock
On the same day, The Washington Post carried a wordy op-ed by David Pollock, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a senior State Department adviser for the broader Middle East from 2002 to 2007. The op-ed, "Our Indian problem in Afghanistan," stated in no uncertain terms that "President Obama's trip to India offers a crucial, and counterintuitive, opportunity missing in all the talk about Afghanistan: how to accommodate Pakistan's interests in that country." Pollock said: "Unless we find a way to do that, Pakistan will not stop its tolerance of, or support for, the Afghan Taliban or other extremists on its border with Afghanistan -- nor will it let us eradicate them."
Pollock claimed the US and NATO are jeopardizing Pakistan's "cross-border interests". Asking a rhetorical question, what are those interests, he answered, saying, the "first and foremost, to minimize the presence and influence in Afghanistan of Pakistan's own archrival, India". He acknowledged that while India is "an increasingly important regional and global partner for U.S. foreign policy", "it is in India's self-interest to contain extremist pressures in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and one paradoxically clever way to do that is to lower India's profile in Afghanistan. During his visit, Obama should drive home the point that such self-restraint would best serve our common interest in stabilizing the region." Pollock provided other interests of Pakistan that need to be accommodated, but those were not directly linked to India's role in Afghanistan.
The reason Pollock's op-ed has been discussed here in the context of Afsheen Irani's question to president Obama is primarily to find an answer to her query -- the answer, if president Obama had been forthright and honest, would perhaps have satisfied Irani.
Why Obama obfuscates
Now, to answer Irani's question, I would like to make clear that there are two principle reasons why the United States will not only not identify Pakistan as a terrorist state, but will continue to pour in money to keep Islamabad happy. The first reason is that the United States, once it got into Afghanistan, cannot get out of that rat-trap without Pakistan's "help". The "help" that Pakistan is expected to extend is largely illusory, but the situation in Afghanistan is so bad that there is little else to hold on to. If Irani recalls Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, she would know the bind Washington has gotten into. The pound of flesh needs to be paid. The shylock, in this case Pakistan, will not permit the debtor, the United States, to escape.
In his op-ed, Pollock was trying to formulate how else this pound of flesh can be paid. One course is to kick India, the archenemy of Pakistan, out of Afghanistan. He is urging president Obama to do so. On the other hand, if we consider president Obama was dishonest with his answer to Irani, Pollock was downright deceptive. During the nineteen-nineties civil war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, with the money bags handed out by the Wahhabi-promoting Saudi Arabia, helped to create the Taliban. Then, of course, the Pakistani military, dressed in Taliban garb, fought and defeated the Mujahedeen power-seekers. Where was India at the time? It was really not there and Pakistan's interest, if Pollock can recall, was to secure strategic depth (Hitler would call it the lebensraum) by gaining control of Afghanistan, if and when India invades and overruns Pakistan.
Brushing aside the absurdity of this entirely motivated strategic depth concept touted by the Rawalpindi brass, what must be remembered is that the present Pakistan army chief, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, on whom the Pentagon is leaning heavily for the so-called help, has recently reiterated that he remains "India-centric", and that he fully endorses the importance of having control over Afghanistan in order to assure strategic depth for Pakistan. Doesn't Pollock know about this? Certainly he does, but like president Obama, he cannot tell the truth because it may complicate matters further with Islamabad.
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
The second reason why the United States will never identify Pakistan as a terrorist state is because of Washington's endless worries about Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Pakistan's nuclear weapons were developed under the watch of the Americans in the nineteen-eighties when they were overly eager to get "help" from Pakistani authorities to give the erstwhile Soviet Union a black eye. Right under Washington's nose and with the money that the United States was providing to keep the jihad against the Red Army alive, Islamabad developed its nuclear weapons' capability. But Washington does not want to admit this reality, as it also refuses to accept the other reality, which is that Pakistan will not "help" the United States to eliminate the terrorist assets it has developed, come what may.
But Pakistan's nuclear weapons are a subject of serious concern in Washington because of two reasons. First, if the United States further antagonizes Pakistan, the nuclear weapons will go under the control of Beijing. That would be, in essence, like handing over Pakistan to China. The second worry of Washington is that if it antagonizes and weakens the Pakistan army, the weapons may fall into the hands of the jihadis, who consider the United States a very important enemy. In other words, if the jihadis get hold of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Washington will face their wrath, perhaps more than the others will. So why antagonize Pakistan? Why not appease Islamabad with the "hope" that the Pakistan army will remain in control of its nuclear weapons; that those weapons will not be handed over to China, a potential rival of the United States; and that the jihadis will not get their hands on those weapons to test them on Washington and its allies.
I do not know whether such answers would fully satisfy Afsheen Irani, but I do know that president Obama resorted to providing her an inane answer because the reality is too painful. Briefly speaking, US policy towards Pakistan is in ruins, but no one out there has the courage to say so. They are afraid that if they say as much, the situation in that part of the world could get mighty rough.
Ramtanu Maitra is South Asia Analyst with EIR News Services Inc in Washington DC.

About Us

There are three ways to tackle the issues that repress India. One is to shut our eyes to corruption, venal politicians, anti-entrepreneur bureaucrats, and a mindset against meritocracy. The second is to become part of the system, merge with an interest group, and feel guiltless about street children, rat-eaters, riot-victims, men and women who cannot spell their name, or vote-robbing...